The fireworks display I’ve watched for many years are made by guys from the neighborhood. The soundtrack to my holiday is blasted from family sound systems. The landscape is families taking over sidewalks and streets to host events for communal celebration. Cars are used to block of intersections so that streets can be filled with…
Tag: ideals
non-failure at its finest – directly targeting prismatic failure
the Creative Time Summit: The Curriculum “At the Summit, Chief Curator Nato Thompson described this year’s theme, “the curriculum”: “It singled that which prepares a person for working, thinking, and participating as a fully developed member of society. When understood as a network of lived experiences, learned actions, and known facts, curriculum speaks to all…
if you have never been a teacher
This year I have an intern teacher in my classroom throughout the year. It is similar to a medical residency, where he shadows me and then begins to take over more and more of the teaching work. I thoroughly enjoy talking about teaching, but the real benefits are more tangible. 1. I can go to…
Adolescent rebellions
Before I had anything to lose, before I had the ties that bind, the sense of considering the future in terms of retirement funds, when I saw the world though an truly suspicious eye… I’d told myself, Amelie. Do not simply get a job, make a family and forget you’re obligations beyond that, don’t let…
repost: what is collective failure
Why write? I teach, I live among curious, thinking, learning creatures that make my mind spin. It is a good spin, it keeps my mind sharp. But sometimes there are observations that I need to share, outside of my mind. And most of that has to do with how we, as a society, have failed…
homo sapiens nonsapien
how dumb have we become – just consider plastic water bottles This is a long standing rant of mine, I have subjected my students to it, as well as any stranger present when some cafe refuses to refill my reusable container. We, the American human species – homo sapiens nonsapiens – thats right, I am declaring us…
collective redemption (repost from the beginning)
the essence of what I am writing here I had started this blog with just my name, but it is not about me as a person, is about me as a thinking, observing participant in our world. Collective failure was going to be my first entry. And it seems like quite a depressing a notion….
the whole world is watching !!!
during my protest years, on the frontlines, my critical nature began to wonder why we were there, city after city, phalanxes of riot police, same shield, same batons, same arsenal of crowd control tactics. same chants, same filthy clothes, same blisters, the sameness began to seem useless. http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/21/us/illinois-summit-protests/index.html?hpt=hp_bn1 now I am on the outside, far away…
Bookstores have a self-help aisle, where is the help others aisle?
When I think the distribution of goods, there is the standard concept of material goods, which people feel they are due for their hard work. I can’t say my sense of reward is much different – when I see someTHING I want, I can rationalize it as a reward for my hard work. But the…
what is collective failure
Why write? I teach, I live among curious, thinking, learning creatures that make my mind spin. It is a good spin, it keeps my mind sharp. But sometimes there are observations that I need to share, outside of my mind. And most of that has to do with how we, as a society, have failed…
collective failure 